Harbor of Spies: A Novel of Historic Havana

Lloyd’s second novel, after Rough Passage to London, is a swashbuckling spy adventure set in 1863 Havana, Cuba, that follows Everett Townsend, an American sea captain arrested for sedition. To gain his freedom, Everett reluctantly agrees to become a blockade runner for a corrupt merchant, supporting the Confederate cause by using his ship to carry contraband war material to the South and return to Havana with valuable cargoes of cotton. This is lucrative but dangerous work; Everett evades blockading Union warships, becomes involved with an old unsolved murder, and discovers British complicity in the Spanish slave trade that drives the Cuban economy. Disgusted with Spanish brutality toward slaves, Everett agrees to spy for the Union, putting himself in even more peril and leading the story to a climactic escape sequence. Everett’s family melodrama and a romance plot are also included, but the real draw is Lloyd’s excellent historical detail. (Mar.)